We've been developing a new blog hosting service called PressHarbor since the beginning of the year, and are excited to share with all of our BlogHarbor customers the news of the availability of the PressHarbor Sneak Preview at www.pressharbor.com .

PressHarbor brings you the power and flexibility of WordPress, the world's most popular blogging platform, and makes it easier than ever to start using WordPress to host your own domain.

At PressHarbor, your WordPress software will be pre-installed and pre-configured, so you can get started blogging with this powerful platform right away.

Our system will also automatically update your WordPress software for you, so you'll always be up-to-date with the latest, most secure version of WordPress.

We've also partnered with Automattic to provide World Class Spam Protection with the Akismet service: Every PressHarbor account features a Pro-blogger class Commercial Akismet key for business grade trackback and comment spam protection. That's a $55 Yearly Value - included as part of every PressHarbor account!

Many of our BlogHarbor customers have expressed an interest in WordPress hosting, and have been looking to migrate their current BlogHarbor blog to WordPress but wanted to make sure that found a host that offered the same level of service and support they currently receive at BlogHarbor. Well, the wait is over - PressHarbor is the service you've been waiting for!

Migrating to PressHarbor

It's easy to start a new WordPress blog at PressHarbor, just pick a new domain name you want to blog at and sign up. But what if you're already blogging at BlogHarbor (or on another service powered by Tucows' Blogware engine) and want to move your site to the new platform? Is that possible? Yes, it sure is.

What content can be migrated from BlogHarbor to PressHarbor?

All articles from your BlogHarbor blog can be migrated to your WordPress blog at PressHarbor. We will also able to do redirection of the old URLs to the new ones, so you will not lose your Google ranking, and your original article permalinks will be be redirected to the new links.

Comments can also be migrated. However, a bug in the Blogware export file causes the author information for a comment to not be retained. So all the comments when imported into WordPress are attributed to “Anonymous”. The problem is with the Blogware export file unfortunately so this issue would happen whether you move your Blogware site to PressHarbor or any other hosting service. Therefore, you can request, and in fact we suggest, that we do not migrate comments from your BlogHarbor blog to your new WordPress-based blog at PressHarbor.

All files uploaded to your blog's File Manager will be migrated. So if you have uploaded images to accompany your blog articles for example, we'll move those images to your new PressHarbor account.

What will not be migrated?

The layout or Color Scheme for your blog will not be migrated. The WordPress Theme format is completely different from the Blogware Color Scheme format, so you will have to choose a new look for your blog via one of our installed Themes, install a new Theme from any of the thousands available at the WordPress Theme Viewer at http://themes.wordpress.net/ , or create your own theme. Neither custom components nor Favorites components are migrated.

Sidebar components are not migrated. If you have created any custom components for your blog sidebar, you would need to recreate them on your new WordPress blog using WordPress' Widgets feature.

Trackbacks are not migrated.

Attachments are not migrated. If you have added attachments to your articles, they will not be migrated to your new account.

Blog Settings are not migrated. Since the Blogware system and WordPress system are so different, it is not possible to take any of the settings for your BlogHarbor blog and simply migrate them to your new WordPress blog.

Web Pages are not migrated. If you have any Web Pages, a special type of post which is not dated, you will need to re-create them using the analogous Pages feature in WordPress.

Permissions are not migrated. Category settings and permissions work very differently in WordPress, and we are unable to apply any of the permissions in your Blogware blog to your WordPress-based PressHarbor account.

User accounts are not migrated. So if you have users with permissions to your current Blog, those user accounts will not exist on the new WordPress site. You will need to reconfigure your site using the WordPress Roles and Capabilities framework.

Can I use my *.blogharbor.com address?

You'll need your own domain name to blog at PressHarbor. If you don't already have your own domain name, we're offering a free domain name with all annual subscriptions, and if you enter the coupon code BLOGHARBOR when placing your order, you'll get an extra 10% off the standard PressHarbor rates. We will redirect your original *.blogharbor.com URLs to your new custom domain name blog.

You will be asked to create an Account with us along the way, you’ll use this account to register domains, order and manage hosting, and to submit support tickets. Once you have placed your order, create a Support Ticket and provide us with the following information:

your current BlogHarbor URL

your BlogHarbor Username and Password

where your current domain name (if you have one) is registered

anything else you want us to know about your preferences on moving your site

We will work with you to gather any additional information required and will advise on a timetable for performing the content migration. Once we have completed the content migration, we’ll let you know how to preview your site prior to making any DNS changes, and once you are ready to commit to the move, we’ll provide instructions on making the DNS changes which will allow the Internet to see your site at its new location.
I have more questions about migrating. Where can I ask them?

Please feel free to post them as a reply in this thread, or to contact us with your specific questions.

Last edited by john on Mon Jul 04, 2011 2:03 pm; edited 5 times in total

We don't have any plan to start a trial for PressHarbor itself, but there already exists an easy way to try out the WordPress software we use to power our PressHarbor service: go to WordPress.com and create a free blog!

WordPress.com offers a great way to get started with a WordPress blog. If you like blogging with WordPress, the advantages you will get by blogging on WordPress at PressHarbor are:

Your choice of Themes. Install the WordPress Theme of your choice from among the thousands of available free Themes or create your own. At WordPress.com, you are limited to their available plugins and can not install your own.

Your choice of Plugins. WordPress allows you to expand the functionality of the base software through the use of Plugins. WordPress.com does not allow you to install your own plugins, but you can choose from hundreds of Plugins for your PressHarbor blog.

Includes email hosting. Host your domain name at PressHarbor and get 25 email accounts with our Bronze package, or up to 250 accounts with the Gold level service.

You can even import any posts you make on your WordPress.com site to your PressHarbor blog!

Our company Rackshare has been hosting websites since 2000 and we plan to be here for a long time; we would never abandon you or this business!

Our BlogHarbor service is built on the Blogware platform from Tucows, and we'll continue to deliver BlogHarbor as a service as long as Tucows provides their Blogware platform. We have a special affinity for Blogware, having actively participated in its beta program and being one of the first Blogware-based services to go live all the way back in November 2003 - almost 4 years ago (for me, that's another era entirely - I wasn't a Papa back then so it seems like a lifetime ago... )!

WordPress has gained quite a lot of momentum in the last few years, and deservedly so. It's an excellent piece of software. We wanted to be able to offer a service based on this software not just because it's great, but because we've had a lot of customers are asking for it. And a lot of current BlogHarbor customers as well have been asking for a service like PressHarbor...

They said they want the flexibility of WordPress, but need the great support we offer, and prefer a managed service (with the WordPress software pre-installed and maintained for them). We think PressHarbor offers that same kind of fully-supported "jump right in and get started blogging" experience that we've been able to create with BlogHarbor. And with WordPress, you can even go to the store and buy a book on it to learn more, not to mention that whenever you have a question you can tap into the collective wisdom of tens of thousands of users any time of day or night.

I love the Blogware platform and I love the WordPress platform. Both have pros and cons. Blogware has really deep category tools, you can have per-category templates, color schemes, security, rss feeds... WordPress has a great developer community and a great framework for allowing developers to extend and enhance the WordPress platform through plugins. Both platforms have a long way to go when it comes to making it easier to manage a blog - the control panels are equally confusing to a newcomer!

Quote:

I just don't have time right now to re-build a new blog to coolness.

Just to followup on this point: while the migration would not be effortless, it should be relatively painless... We do all the heavy lifting for you, we'll move all your articles and files. We just last night migrated what had been one of the largest blogs at BlogHarbor, www.MetsBlog.com, to its new home on our PressHarbor platform. MetsBlog has become a full-time job for its owner Matthew Cerrone - he's now a professional blogger, someone who makes a living publishing a blog! Matt wanted to move to WordPress to offer some additional functionality to his community that was not possible with a Blogware-based blog, so he chose to move his site to our PressHarbor plaform.

Overnight, we moved over 10,000 articles to the new site; Matt just woke up this morning to find that all of his articles for the past 3 years were now in his new blog... He was pretty excited about the move...

So if moving to WordPress was something you'd been interested in, then our PressHarbor service might be a good choice for you. If you're happy as you are, that's OK too.

I have used Categories extensively in my blog, will these be migrated, or will I just have one massive list of posts that no one can navigate once its migrated? If so how easy is it to go and add catagories again once migrated.

Do you know what will happen to my technorati rank, will I have to start again, or will I be able to switch over and retain it?

How long will you maintain URL redirection?

What will happen to my RSS feeds, will they be redirected?

Will all my embedded images still work, these images are all stored on my blog.

or will I just have one massive list of posts that no one can navigate once its migrated?

That will not be the case.

If so how easy is it to go and add catagories again once migrated.

It is as easy to add categories in WordPress as it is in the Blogware platform.

Do you know what will happen to my technorati rank, will I have to start again, or will I be able to switch over and retain it?

Our customers report no impact to their Technorati rank. A direct quote from one customer who switched: The switch was very smooth and my rankings with say Technorati and Google PageRank do not seem to have suffered any detriment.

How long will you maintain URL redirection?

For months. But you will need your own domain name, as noted above.

What will happen to my RSS feeds, will they be redirected?

Yes, we direct visitors to your new RSS feed.

Will all my embedded images still work, these images are all stored on my blog.

As noted earlier in the original post to this thread, we move the files in your File Manager to your new blog. And they do retain their original URL.

All those answers esem fine, apart from "a few months" for the redirection, which seems a bit of a worry. I have many hundreds of things that link to my permalinks, they are meant to be permenant!

Steve

If you check back and re-read my response, I wrote "for months" and not "a few months." What I am saying is we'll be able to measure that time in months, as opposed to years or days. And we will be issuing "301 Redirects" which tell the search engines that this is the new location for the content, please update your index accordingly, so the search engines will show the revised location.

And for the sake of anyone else reading this post, please note that this question is for someone using a *.blogharbor.com address for their blog. If you are using your own domain name on your blog, then the new PressHarbor account will handle all redirection for your site.

I feel a bit better about this now following your answer. However there is one big issue for me which is all the embedded links in my blog posts pointing to other blog posts. These are absolute not relative, ie they link to the permalinks. Is there anything that can be done to extend the period of redirection to years, or a utility that could be run on the posts to do a global search and replace of the URL, ie changes steves.blogharbor.com/???? to steves.newdomainname.com/???

Excellent. Do I need to do anything special to request this search and replace of intrnal links. Plus if it all goes wrong is there any way to backout of the migration and keep the old blogware blog?_________________Steve Richards

Do I need to do anything special to request this search and replace of intrnal links.

All of the migration is done by hand, a person does it for you. It's not an automatic process that happens with out human interaction. So during the process, just make sure to mention it. Maybe put it in the notes during your order.

Plus if it all goes wrong is there any way to backout of the migration and keep the old blogware blog?

It won't "all go wrong" but if you decide you don't want to make the switch, then you can certainly make that choice.

Now, since I've talked so much about why I left [for] Wordpress, I&rsquo;m sure you expect a description of the actual migration process. I'm afraid I'll disappoint: the migration was a non-event. I made the call, and two days later my blog was up an running on Wordpress. Old posts, comments, trackbacks, pictures - Pressharbor took care of it. My main concern was not to lose links, trackbacks to old posts: while Blogware had their own cryptic permalink structure, on Wordpress I am using the SEO-friendly title-based permalink formula. Pressharbor set up 301 redirects for every single of my old posts, and in a few days I saw Google reindex all and point to the new permalinks.

A great read for anyone considering a move to our new PressHarbor platform.